No one cared. No one heeded the alarms. No one moved toward the Crew Emergency Reentry Vehicles.
From the astronomical observatory at the uppermost corner of Trikon Station two space-suited figures emerged, one of them encased in the “armchair” rig of a manned maneuvering unit, MMU.
Dan Tighe, commander of Trikon Station, fought back murderous fury and a terrible fear that clawed at his chest as he watched the space station begin to wobble and sway. Through the heavily tinted visor of his helmet he saw the bulbous burnt-orange structure of the Mars module detach itself from the station and begin to drift away, like a rudderless ship caught by an evil tide. The broad wings of the solar panels were swaying, undulating visibly. Dan knew they would break up within minutes.
We’re all going to die, said a voice inside his head. We’re going to die and it’s my fault. All my own goddamned stupid fault.
15 AUGUST 1998
TRIKON STATION
Names are important. When we hammered together this consortium of major industrial corporations I insisted upon a name that would reflect its spirit of international cooperation, a name that would not offend any of the sensitive egos among the various boards of directors, or in the governments to whom they paid taxes. The corporations were based in Europe, North America, and Japan. Three continents: Trikon.
The original spelling proposed was Tricon; however, my public relations consultants suggested that this might cause confusion over the hard or soft pronunciation of the letter c. The letter k connotes strength and provides an echo of classical Greece.
So they said.
—From the diary of Fabio Bianco, CEO, Trikon International
The station had been in operation for more than a year on the day when the trouble began.
David Nutt still encountered that moment of vertigo, that feeling that his insides were adrift and he was falling into a strange pastel-colored abyss. Everything was shifting, swirling like a kaleidoscope.
Clutching at the metal edge of the entry hatch, Dave took a deep breath and lined himself up with the strip of black tape stuck onto the bottom of its lip.
“This side down, stupid,” he muttered to himself.
The pastels tumbled into perspective. A long cylinder with a pale blue-floor and yellow ceiling. Silver and white equipment in racks along the walls. Ovens, centrifuge, microscopes all where they should be, and right-side-up. But it didn’t help that the damned technician was floating almost on his head at the far end of the lab.
The American scientific laboratory module had been nicknamed The Bakery by an earlier rotation of researchers. The pastel colors were the brainchildren of a team of psychologists who had never left the ground. Nutt was grateful for their help. After six months aboard Trikon Station, he still had trouble orienting himself whenever he moved from one module to another. In the microgravity world of the space station, with everything weightless, he had trouble telling up from down without help. If he pulled himself through the hatch at any angle except true vertical The Bakery became a distorted alien world and his guts would start churning. Nutt was a confirmed “flatlander.” He felt queasy unless he had his feet on a solid floor, even in the almost-zero gravity of the space station.
Fifteen meters away, at the far end of the cylinder, Stu Roberts was loading tempered glassware into the two huge microwave ovens that had inspired the lab’s nickname. His thick mop of brick-red hair was puffed up into a wild, waving nest of weightless microgravity snakes. The mesh hairnet he was supposed to be wearing was nowhere in sight. His white coveralls looked grimy and spattered. Thin-faced, lean, and loose-jointed as a scarecrow, Roberts was making this rotation the longest six months of Nutt’s life.
Roberts fancied himself a creative soul. Simple tasks such as sterilizing glassware and monitoring experiments were too easy for him, so he constantly poked himself into Nutt’s research. He invented shortcuts, misused organic material, and analyzed data in ways that only he could interpret, all with an irrepressible cheerfulness that irritated Nutt beyond measure.
Roberts closed the oven door, then floated upside down over to the keyboard that controlled the ovens and other equipment and deftly tapped out a combination. He clamped a pair of earphones over his wild hair and immediately started to convulse, feet kicking wildly and arms flailing at tiny spheres of color that bubbled up around his head. A stranger might have thought that Roberts was being electrocuted or zapped by lethal microwaves. Dave knew better.